


Heaven Through Hell

by Merfilly



Category: DC Elseworlds
Genre: Future Fic, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-26
Updated: 2011-04-26
Packaged: 2018-01-14 01:54:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1248334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of <i>Kingdom Come</i>, Bruce Wayne loses his peace of mind through a curse. His peers console him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heaven Through Hell

Batman had refused to stop fighting when his back was broken, and somehow that legacy of stubborn had remained with him throughout his days. With the delicate peace now forged in the aftermath of Kansas and the Gulag, his job had not gotten any easier. If anything, he had to walk more cautiously, analyzing every act carefully against the risks of setting off a new super-powered race to destruction. It didn't mean he fought any less, especially with all the friends and comrades he had lost. 

If he had not actually been on the streets that night, lending personal depth to what his drones did for him, things might have gone differently. The magic user was never Batman's target, but in the end, Batman was the recipient of the mage's final spell.

`~`~`~`~`

The hardest part on Kal was the mortality of their third. All the cybernetics and bioware improvements in the world could not hold off Death's visit forever. Kal made himself not dwell on it, yet Diana could see it in his eyes every time they visited Bruce in his home. They both were aging, but so slowly as to be like immortals to someone very clearly approaching his shadow years.  It led to a soul-searching quest within herself, to make peace with the idea of having such a fragile love, to enjoy all they could of his time now, and to store happier memories for the time to come when he would not be at their side. She wasn't sure how Kal had reached the same decision, but they both had.

Then the call came.

`~`~`~`~`

This was not what he had envisioned. When he had pledged himself to first Gotham, and then to humanity, Bruce Wayne had seen one life clawed out of the misery of the night, a life serving the needs of all those children who still held their parents' hands, and laughed freely. The Bat had subsumed that simple, naïve dream of stopping any more orphans from coming into existence. The Bat had been part of the problem, leading to greater threats that had led to the superpower escalation that left humanity in the dust of all-out war. For every calculation made correctly, there had been three less fortunate, leading to results Bruce had never truly wanted.

Now he was facing a new outcome he had neither planned for nor wanted. On certain levels, the outcome of his latest case was beneficial to the Mission, and that should matter most.

On purely human levels, he felt cheated and angry.

One lifetime. That was all it should have been!

Bruce Wayne stared into the mirror, and found himself praying that the curse was a limited one, rubbing at a mature jawline that showed no signs of the long battle he had already fought.

`~`~`~`~`

"What did Jason Blood have to say about it?" Kal asked as the three adults sat in the cave, having become acquainted with the details of Bruce's encounter and the spell that had hit him. 

"Etrigan," Bruce said, emphasizing the name as Jason Blood was mostly lost these days to the Demon's influence, "thinks that this is possibly the best curse he's seen in a century at least."

"His sense of humor," Diana said with a sniff. "Though, really, Bruce, is it a curse?"

Both the others in the cave saw Bruce's hand clench into a fist on the arm of the chair he sat in. " _Take a fall ye shall not, whilst crime remains a blot, young and strong ye must be, until peace comes to set ye free._ " He glared at Diana fiercely. "I've lived my entire life trying to make Gotham peaceful and safe! And now, because of some wizard's dying curse, I am Sisyphus to my task for eternity? This city, much as I love her, is not a peaceful one by its very nature!"

"Bruce, it's not what she meant," Kal objected, shifting in his chair. "And you don't know it is not breakable. There are other magic users out there for us to ask."

"Nabu says that it is transferable." Bruce's eyes narrowed as he admitted it. While he did not appreciate being saddled with the geas, Bruce was far too much a man of his own personal responsibility to inflict his curse on another man or woman. "With clauses!" he added as both Kal and Diana opened their mouths. "Neither of you is human, neither of you have Gotham in your heart."

"Still," Diana persisted. "There is hope for you. And until then... there's hope for us," she said softly, flicking her eyes to Kal and then back to Bruce. "You know how it has weighed on us, all three of us, for the differences between us."

Bruce took a deep breath, then nodded. "That is one silver lining, I agree," he said, his voice gentling from his anger at the situation, before he looked at Kal. "Think you can handle me at this apparent age?"

"Do you plan on being as ornery as you were the first time you looked like that?" Kal asked, sterner features relaxing for the moment into something approaching human. Diana did not hold back her laugh, earning the patented Bat-Scowl her way, which only made her laughter grow, until Kal joined in, and finally Bruce smiled.

"I had reasons to be ornery, as you put it. Often you were the number one reason," Bruce told Kal. "With Diana not far behind as number two."

"We weren't that bad!" Kal protested, and the years, the tragedies seemed to melt away from him, to have Bruce out of that foul mood and talking about the old days.

"We have been," Diana, embodiment of truth, had to admit, which was enough to coax a chuckle from Bruce. She got up from her chair and went to his side, crouching down so she could look at his face while he smiled. "I think I'd forgotten how beautiful your voice could be," she told him when he stopped and looked at her intently.

His eyes softened, and he shifted in his chair, making it clear that she could join him. When she did, he took advantage of this position to rest his head on her, arms around her waist. "Mentally, I'm still that tired, broken man, Diana. But physically... It's all renewed, fit, ready for the fight. There's a schism between my brain and my body, as well as my general resentment," he told her, soft and quiet now that he had gotten his temper out of his system.

Diana let him hold her, looking to Kal once to see what he thought. The Kryptonian was passive, waiting for her lead, or for Bruce's choice in matters, playing the part of the silent observer now. "That would be hard," Diana told Bruce quietly. "But you know you're not alone. It might take years, or decades, but if setting you free hinges on Gotham finding peace, you have me, and you have Kal. There's Dick... Ibn and Nightstar..."

Bruce looked up into her eyes, shaking his head after seeing her conviction there. "You are ever the optimist."

"And you're not, but we already knew this," Diana told him, leaning down to brush her lips over his lightly. That turned to another kiss, this one a little more intense, as Bruce's body remembered just what it was like to hold the Amazon and have her kisses for rewards.

Kal sat back in his chair, watching as Diana responded to Bruce's more commanding kiss. They had been comfortable, the three of them bound in ways that defied the more conventional relationship of a man and a woman in a sanctioned marriage. He had no doubt Norman probably wouldn't approve, to know that the two most powerful beings in the world routinely took a frail mortal man to their bed, holding him, just being a family. But what happened in privacy was not meant for judgment by others, Kal knew. It had been a lesson learned decades ago, when Lois had chided him for narrow, corn-fed views of the world.

He let slip the passing sadness at the memory of his wife, and watched instead as his current companions shared a love that surpassed the boundaries of superstrength and immortality. Bruce was willing to be distracted from his current conundrum, and Diana was more than willing to be his distraction in turn. Kal debated if he should join them directly, or wait. Diana and Bruce had been together briefly in the times before the world broke.  They had shared an intimacy brought forward by the threat of death, and tasted what it could have been between them before deciding to push it into something less entwined. 

Kal almost thought that was a pity, as easily as Diana and Bruce had moved into their current relationship after the meeting at the UN. Watching them now, when it was just kisses and holding onto one another, Kal felt his heart beat harder with joy. Yes, he understood Bruce's anger, but at the same time, he would have them both as companions, as they each did what they could to heal the wounds they had all helped inflict on the tired world they loved. 

"Stop thinking so much and go get the bed turned down," Bruce mock-growled at Kal, in between kissing Diana's lips and having her pet along his ribs with firm, insistent strokes. "If you think you get to just play investigative reporter..."

"The voyeurism was always more your beat, anyway," Kal retorted, but he rose and turned to go to the sub-cave that served as a bedroom, readying the bed. He looked back at a sound, X-ray vision serving to let him see what had provoked the sharp little protest from Diana's throat. He chuckled, seeing Bruce surge up to his feet, Diana in a 'princess' carry in his arms. 

"You... man!" she said, with an affectionate shake of her head.

"While I have no problem with your gender, I'd just as soon never have to be one," Bruce retorted. "Too much practice being what I am to cope with the center of gravity change."

"Hmm...Dick would make the prettier woman," Diana teased him, earning a small growl from Bruce as they entered the sub-cave.

"I have to agree with her," Kal said. "His cheekbones..."

Bruce rolled his eyes upward, dumping Diana on the bed as if offended. "Maybe you should invite him here instead?"

That got him Kal standing behind him at superspeed, and Diana grabbing his wrist.

"Dick might be prettier," Diana began. "But you are ours!" She let her possessive nature out in that final syllable, even as Kal pressed close to Bruce's warm back.

"Wouldn't trade you for him, ever," Kal breathed across Bruce's ear, feeling Bruce press back with a strength that Kal had missed the entire time they had been involved this time around.

Bruce closed his eyes, then let Diana pull him down to the bed. There was a primitive feel of ritual in the way they all came together, as if sealing an unspoken pact made possible by the way magic had, yet again, reared up to bite Bruce deeply.

`~`~`~`~`

Kal lay on his side, watching Bruce as he slept, aware of Diana still sleeping curled against his back. It was chilly in the caves; it always had been, yet Bruce slept separate from them, a space between himself and the pair of superpowered heroes. Kal had to wonder if it was deliberate, or if it was just a part of deeply Bruce had trained himself not to trust those who were not human.

"Stop staring. You're a damn furnace when you sleep," Bruce said, without opening his eyes or even letting his respiration and heart give away his wakeful state. "If you'd stop hogging the middle, I'd still be closer to you both."

"How do you do that? Did... did J'onn ever tamper with your mind?" Kal asked, stumbling on the name, because that living death still stung.

Bruce did crack an eyelid at the mention of the Martian. "Not in the way you mean. Before he tried to end the violence, he did go in and help guard us all by taking on my discipline of mind, which necessitated a small sharing of personality. But I wasn't reading your mind; it's long-term observation of you and your habits."

"I think you read minds," Kal said stubbornly. "Because you always seem to know what I am thinking."

"How long have I known you?" Bruce pointed out, rolling up onto his own side to look at his lover, friend, ally, and occasional nemesis. "I observe. More in depth than you did even as a reporter."

"That was a long time ago," Kal said on an exhaled sigh. "Newspapers are dead media, and the reports on the Internet all overtake the public with no verification and plenty of contradiction."

"Yet humanity ticks on, learning who to trust as they go," Bruce said, both cynicism and hope mingled in that statement. He reached out and pushed Kal's hair away from his face, irritated at the way it fell when disheveled. "I don't read minds. I wish J'onn hadn't. And he never would have inflicted it on me."

"You two..." Kal cocked his head. He'd known that things ran close in their community; he and Bruce had enjoyed something in the earliest days, and then Bruce with Diana, but Bruce and J'onn had been above all else, it seemed.

Bruce nodded, but his lips thinned; he was not yet at a place he could speak of that, any more than he ever spoke of Oliver or Harper or Dinah.

Grief took time. One thing at a time had to be dealt with, and grief was very far down on the priority list.

"Sorry." Kal leaned in, awkwardly hugging Bruce with his upper arm.

"You should be, for waking me," Diana said from behind him, before sitting up against the headboard so she could stretch. "Morning."

"Closer to afternoon," Bruce said wryly, putting aside the memories to live in the now; it was the only way to survive.

"We probably ought to be heading out," Kal said with a rueful expression.

"Cressida is expecting me this evening," Diana said, sighing gustily at the duties she had to perform, even without picking up her ambassadorial role.

"And you both have been assured that I am not without my sanity, despite this change in my plans," Bruce pointed out. "Normal place, normal time?" he invited, for their next meeting.

Diana looked over Kal's shoulder, a pouty expression gracing her perfect lips. "I did say this evening..."

"And I said probably," Kal added, catching that vibe from his lady companion without even needing to turn his head.

"And I call you both impossible, insatiable, and incorrigible!" Bruce exploded, though it was more in humor than anything else.

Now Kal and Diana did exchange a look with one another, smiles lighting their countenances in tandem. Kal found it quite easy to hover across to the other side of Bruce, putting the youthened human squarely in the middle of the two superhumans.

"What am I going to do with the pair of you?"

"Fight crime, make the world better, and enjoy this," Diana breathed before claiming the first of many more kisses.


End file.
